As revisited in the 2019 feature film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, August 9, 1969 was a dark day for La La Land. Although the Tarantino movie showed Brad Pitt’s character Cliff Booth defeating the attackers, the real-life events were distressingly different.  Manson ordered his followers – the Manson Family – to go to 10050 Cielo Drive and murder the inhabitants. 26-year-old actress Sharon Tate and her four friends Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Steven Parent and Jay Sebring lost their lives in the early hours of the morning. Sharon was also pregnant at the time. The following night, Manson’s ‘family’ murdered Rosemary and Leno LaBianca in their home at 3301 Waverly Drive

Manson later revealed the inspiration behind these heinous murders came from The Beatles’ music . The year before, the Fab Four released their ninth studio album, The White Album and Manson became obsessed with the British band.

Later on, Manson would claim the music from The White Album – and the track Helter Skelter in particular – foretold “racial tensions between the Black and the White communities were about to erupt”. He used the phrase Helter Skelter as a shorthand for the beginning of a bloody, apocalyptic race war that was destined to begin in the near future.

The assailants painted the words “Healter Skelter” (sic) on the fridge of the LaBianca’s home in the victims’ blood. 

Manson later said: “[Helter Skelter] means confusion, literally. It doesn’t mean any war with anyone. It doesn’t mean that some people are going to kill other people…. Helter Skelter is confusion. Confusion is coming down around you fast. If you can’t see the confusion coming down around you fast, you can call it what you wish.”

He added that he did not tell anyone to commit murders, the music did. He said: “Is it a conspiracy that the music is telling the youth to rise up against the establishment because the establishment is rapidly destroying things? Is that a conspiracy? The music speaks to you every day, but you are too deaf, dumb, and blind to even listen to the music… It is not my conspiracy. It is not my music. I hear what it relates. It says ‘Rise,’ it says ‘Kill.’ Why blame it on me? I didn’t write the music.”

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Manson went on trial in June 1970, alongside his cohorts Leslie Van Houten, Steve “Clem” Grogan, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian and Patricia Krenwinkel.

He told the district attorney at the time: “It’s the Beatles, the music they’re putting out. These kids listen to this music and pick up the message. It’s subliminal.”

Paul McCartney opened up about the Tate murders in the 2000 Beatles Anthology. He said of Manson’s conspiracies about Helter Skelter: “I still don’t know what all that stuff is; it’s from the Bible, ‘Revelations’ – I haven’t read it so I wouldn’t know. But he interpreted the whole thing … and arrived at having to go out and kill everyone… It was frightening because you don’t write songs for those reasons.”

George Harrison said: “It was upsetting to be associated with something so sleazy as Charles Manson.”

Ringo Starr had a profoundly personal view of the event. He said: “I mean, I knew [Tate’s husband] Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate and, god, it was a rough time.”

Manson was convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder (with two more added later) and sentenced to life behind bars, which he served at the California State Prison. He died on November 19, 2017, aged 83.